The Parabellum Story (GunFacts).pdf - Forgotten Weapons

These are the first too/room guns made on
production tools at Oberndorf. one in 7.65mm,
one in 9mm. Ugly taper of 7.65mm barrel
will probably be changed. Note marking
"38 Luger" on lower gun.
Je produced again. It is a machinist's
nightmare, simply too costly and complex.
A respected writer, happily ignorant
of forthcoming events, went into
print a year ago saying " it has been
concluded that under present day costs
each (Luger) pistol would cost at least
$400 to produce. ' ' That would indicate
a retail price tag of something over
$1000 per gun. What sort of hat the
writer conjured this number out of we
don't know, but evidently his editor
didn't think it so out of line.
Attempting to manufacture the original
Luger once more at a salable
price certainly ranks as a first rate
gamble, if not an impossibility. Why
Mauser would want to is obvious; how
they expect to pull it off is somewhat
less so.
Start with the fact that a market
exists. There' s an aura, a mystique, an
almost hypnotic quality to the Luger
that only one other gun can match.
Some U.S. soldiers confidently toted
plow-handle Single Actions of 1873
vintage off to Korea, trusting more in
their mythical powers than in the demonstrable
efficiency of more modern
sidearms. Had the Luger been available,
it would have been the choice
of many on equal logic. Ruger and a
host of others proved that the antiquated
single action would sell on
sentiment and silhouette alone to
spor:tsmen, plinkers, and those who
wished merely to enjoy the pleasure of
possession. The commercial path was
thus widened and paved for Colt' s
to reintroduce the Peacemaker.
It had been Mr. Ruger, sagaciously
playing on the similarity of his name
and Luger's, who introduced in 1949
his Standard Model22 autoloader, with
looks that are blatantly Teutonic. The
looks, as much as the advanced design
and reasonable price, of the Ruger
Standard model earned it the popularity
that made it the bill payer at the
Southport plant for years thereafter.
More recently Erma in Germany and
Stoeger in the U.S. have proved beyond
doubt thai; the Luger looks sell .
Up to how high a price will sentiment
sell a gun, and to how many
people will it sell at that price? These
are the questions which killed every
attempt to put the Luger back in production
since the Second World War.
And until the answers are known, there
will be a lot of fingers crossed at
Mauser and at I nterarms.
The Luger was not a dead issue after
World War II by any means. Itscorpse
had been kicking vigorously ever since.
And while this series will concern
itself largely with the torturous and
complex story of the Parabellum since
1945, we must look a good bit further
back in order to put post-war events in
historical perspective:
The Luger was derived directly from
the Borchardt pistol, which was introduced
by the Ludwig Loewe Co. of
Berlin in 1893. Hugo Borchardt, the
pistol' s inventor, was a naturalized
American citizen then employed by
Loewe. Borchardt had immigrated to
the United States with his parents
when still a boy of sixteen years. In
1875, he became superintendent of the
Sharps Rifle Co. of Hartford, Connecticut
where he designed the Sharps­
Borchardt single shot rifle. Later, he
served as chief draftsman at Winchester.
Returning to Europe, he became
director of the Budapest Arsenal, but
resigned this position and left Hungary
rather precipitately after an alleged
feud with General Fejervary, the Hungarian
minister of war, over a lady's
affections.
Georg Luger was born in the Tyrolean
section of Austria in 1848. After
leaving military service in 1872, he
moved to Vienna and worked for many
years with the Baron von Mannlicher,
one of Europe's most brilliant arms
designers. In 1891 Luger took an important
position at the Loewe Co., and
it may well have been he who brought
Borchardt and his pistol to the attention
of Loewe management. It is not
clear whether Borchardt conceived and
designed his pistol in the United States
or in Europe, but the latter is somewhat
the more probable.
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